There’s a particular kind of tired that sets in around February. Not the tired that a good night’s sleep fixes. The kind that lives behind your eyes and sits heavy in your chest when you pull into the school parking lot and have to give yourself a little talk before you open the car door.
If you know, you know.
I’ve been in special education long enough to know that February arrives like an uninvited guest every single year, and every single year it surprises me a little anyway. Because February is a liar. And it’s very convincing.
The Kids Feel It Too — Even When They Can’t Tell You
Here’s something newer staff don’t always understand yet — your sensory kids are dysregulated right now, and many of them have absolutely no idea why. They can’t tell you “I haven’t had fresh air and real sunshine in months and my body is screaming for movement.” They just know something feels wrong. So they hit. They flee. They shut down. They escalate over something that wouldn’t have touched them in October.
Their nervous systems are telling the truth. Their behavior is the only language they have for it.
They’ve been indoors. The sunshine that naturally regulates mood and sleep cycles has been rationed to gray, weak slivers of light through classroom windows. Their bodies crave proprioceptive input — heavy work, running, climbing — and instead they’ve been asked to sit. Again. And so the behaviors that were manageable in the fall feel volcanic now, and your staff is absorbing the eruptions daily, professionally, without flinching.
That is extraordinary. And exhausting.
And Then There’s Us
We tell ourselves we’re fine. We are not always fine.
The internet in January is relentless with its hope. New year. New you. Resolutions and vision boards and the particular cruelty of “new year, new habits” landing right when the holidays have already depleted every reserve you had. I don’t know about you, but by February, a lot of those hopeful January intentions have quietly died. And instead of grace, we give ourselves a verdict.
And then — oh, and then — there’s Pinterest. And Instagram. And whatever corner of the internet you wander into at 9pm when you’re too tired to do anything productive but too wired to sleep. The Cozy Winter Meals. The Snuggly Craft Projects. The family in matching flannel pajamas drinking cocoa by a fire that is definitely gas and definitely staged.
I have looked at those images and felt simultaneously comforted and completely hollowed out. Because WHO is doing the cozy and snuggly? Because I am not feeling it. I am feeling used up, and fake, and deeply suspicious of anyone whose February looks like a Williams-Sonoma catalog.
The Seedy Underbelly
Here’s the part nobody puts on their education blog.
Winter — the real dark of it, the short days and long nights — has a way of turning you inward. And introspection is good. Until it isn’t. Until you’re sitting in the quiet and you don’t entirely like what you find there. The impatience you thought you’d dealt with. The resentment that snuck in. The creeping question of whether you’re actually making a difference or just surviving the day.
I’ve been there. If there’s a mistake to be made in this profession, I’ve probably made it, learned from it, and made it again just to be sure.
And here is what I know about that place: feelings are liars.
Not always. But in February? In the dark and the cold and the indoor-trapped exhaustion? They are absolutely not a reliable narrator. The feeling that nothing is working is not the same as nothing working. The feeling that you’re failing is not the same as failing. The feeling that spring will never come is — and I say this with complete confidence — factually incorrect.
What I Tell My Coworkers
Every year around this time, I make cards for my team. Not generic “Keep Going” cards. Something that says — I see you. I know what this costs. I know you don’t hear thank you from your students. I know you took a hit today, maybe literally, and you’ll come back tomorrow anyway.
This year I made twelve of them. One for the behavior techs on the front lines. One for my newer staff who don’t know yet that February is cyclical and survivable. One to remind everyone to look for the small victories — because in special education, the victories are quiet and easy to miss if you’ve stopped looking.
I’m sharing them here as a free download because every special education team deserves someone who notices what they carry.
The Thing About Sunshine
It will come. It always comes.
The sensory kids will get outside and their bodies will remember what they forgot. The behaviors will soften. The days will get longer. Somewhere in late March or April you will have a moment — maybe driving home, maybe standing in your classroom doorway — where you feel it lift. The heaviness. The lie that February told you.
Trust that. Trust it even now when you can’t feel it yet.
You were made for this work. Not because it’s easy. Because you keep showing up anyway. And that — even on the gray days, even in the parking lot pep talks, even in the seedy underbelly of your own February feelings — that is enough.
Hold on. Sunshine is coming. Grab those free cards HERE!
— Sarah
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